rt2860 driver (fc11)

[John W. Linville]

On Thu, Aug 06, 2009 at 05:14:01AM -0400, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 4:58 AM, drago01 wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 10:45 AM, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
> >>
> >> I maintain those drivers at RPMFusion. I will be happy beyond
> >> imagination when the staging drivers are marked stable.
> >
> > They won't ever (the rtxxxx Vendor drivers)
> >
> 
> >From my understanding, the staging tree of the kernel contains drivers
> that are being prepared to be included in the main kernel tree[1].
> Correct me if I'm wrong.

You are essentially wrong.

The drivers in the staging tree may or may not make their way to the
main kernel.  I'm sure Greg and others hope that they will, and at
least some of them probably will.  Unfortunately, none of the wireless
drivers there appear likely to do that.

Beyond the normal atrociousness of the code common to nearly all
of the vendor-supplied staging drivers, the wireless drivers also
tend to ignore the wireless infrastructure supplied upstream.
This includes both the mac80211 component of "soft MAC" devices
and the cfg80211 configuration component for all wireless devices.
As a community, we are refusing to accept drivers that duplicate
the mac80211 functionality and now we are requiring the use of
cfg80211 for new drivers as well.  We simply can't afford to support
multiple implementations of the "soft MAC" functionality and the older
'wireless extensions' API is too broken and bug-ridden for continued
promulgation.

The drivers in staging are best used as a guide to the workings of
the hardware.  I understand your desire for rt2860 and other devices
to be supported, but the staging drivers just aren't acceptable.
I would encourage you to put your efforts towards improving the rt2x00
driver family instead of propping-up the drivers in staging.

Hth!

John
-- 
John W. Linville		Linux should be at the core
linville at redhat.com			of your literate lifestyle.